States are preparing low-income phone programs for federal changes to Lifeline, as the FCC Dec. 1 implementation deadline nears. With several Lifeline rules taking effect Dec. 2, under an FCC schedule (see 1610030040), NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay predicted some states will support a USTelecom petition to give some states more time. The Kentucky Public Service Commission plans to issue soon an order about how the changes affect its program, the Minnesota PUC released an order last week, and commissions in California and the District of Columbia are collecting comments. States have sued the FCC over the order, which added broadband internet access service (BIAS) as a supported service in the program.
The telecom industry and a consumer group diverge on the extent of California rural call completion problems as the Public Utilities Commission readies a decision on outages and other issues. The CPUC indicated last week it will act in November on call completion issues, including Frontier Communications/Verizon California transition problems (see 1610130059), after analyzing data from carriers and consumer comments collected during hearings. In comments posted over the weekend (docket I.14-05-012), the Center for Accessible Technology said rural service in California is dangerously unreliable, and big telecom companies said they didn’t see a major problem that couldn’t instead be addressed by the FCC. Smaller LECs said they saw a problem, blaming companies that carry traffic to their networks.
The Indiana Finance Authority seeks to ease concerns from state telecom industry associations about the administration's agreement to lease the state’s cell towers and other communications infrastructure to Ohio-based Agile Networks, IFA Public Finance Director Dan Huge told us Thursday. Gov. Mike Pence (R), Donald Trump’s running mate, announced the agreement last month, saying it would expand rural and agricultural broadband and wireless services (see 1609080074). The Indiana Cable Telecommunications Association and the Indiana Broadband and Technology Association protested the process that led to the contract. In an interview, Agile Chief Technology Officer Kyle Quillen defended Indiana’s procurement process as “nothing but transparent.”
The FCC Wireline Bureau modified procedures for state commissions to access nonpublic Form 477 subscription data. “Each commission wishing to access, or to continue to access, shared data for its state must execute an updated data-sharing letter of agreement,” the FCC said in a public notice Thursday in docket 11-10. The revisions are part of the bureau’s modernization of the secure online repository for the shared data, it said. What states may do with carriers’ Form 477 data has been central to a court dispute between telecom companies and the California Public Utilities California and The Utility Reform Network (see 1609160054). “This notice proves the point that the CPUC and TURN were making before the federal court,” TURN staff attorney Christine Mailloux emailed Thursday. “It was never the FCC’s intent to prohibit state commissions from using Form 477 data in their own proceedings or to disclose this data under specific circumstances and proper protections.” The new form letter clarifies that FCC and bureau rules “are primarily concerned with unlimited ‘public’ disclosure of the data through a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] or state public records process than the scenario we have in this California case,” she said. But the FCC notice doesn’t address a state’s authority to require regulated entities to provide data to the state commission and then share that data under protection to third parties, she said. Rather, the FCC notice appears to apply only when a state commission requests Form 477 data directly from the FCC, she said.
The California Public Utilities Commission plans to act on rural call completion issues, including Frontier Communications' troublesome transition from Verizon in April, Commissioner Catherine Sandoval said Thursday. The CPUC presented on the Frontier transition at a field meeting live-streamed from Long Beach, an area affected by outages. California consumers continued in September to complain about Frontier, but in smaller numbers, and the company said Thursday it’s operating business as usual. Florida and Texas regulators also continue to monitor Frontier post-transition, state officials said.
The New Hampshire Department of Safety hopes to brief gubernatorial candidates on FirstNet “in the coming weeks,” but nothing is planned yet, the state’s FirstNet single point of contact (SPOC) told us. It's among at least eight states and territories that will have new governors in 2017 who will need quickly to get up to speed on the national public safety network to inform state decisions next year on whether to opt in (see 1610050026). No direct conversations have taken place, but both candidates are on the state’s Executive Council and heard a FirstNet presentation during a council meeting, New Hampshire SPOC John Stevens emailed Friday. The major candidates in the race are Colin Van Ostern (D) and Chris Sununu (R).
Flooding from Hurricane Matthew is testing telecom companies trying to restore communications service Tuesday on the Southeast coast. Matthew slowed to a post-tropical cyclone Sunday and exited east, but flooding reportedly continued, especially in North Carolina. Over the long weekend, President Barack Obama declared federal emergencies in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. Damage from the storm also was reported in Virginia.
FCC bureaus issued Hurricane Matthew procedures to help communications services initiate, resume and maintain operations in affected areas. The Public Safety Bureau posted guidance for each bureau in a public notice Thursday. “Presentations that directly relate to the emergency posed by Hurricane Matthew are exempt from the restrictions of the Commission’s ex parte rules,” it said. The Florida Public Service Commission said it’s warning consumers and monitoring investor-owned electric utilities (IOUs) as they prepare for Hurricane Matthew. “The PSC is urging families to prepare now for Hurricane Matthew, a severe storm affecting Florida’s eastern coast,” PSC Chairman Julie Brown said in a news release Thursday. “State offices, as well as other governmental agencies and businesses, are closed in 26 counties, so people have time to prepare and get ready.” The PSC will remain open because its Tallahassee headquarters isn’t in a high-impact or evacuation zone, a spokeswoman emailed. “We assist at the Emergency Operations Center manning [Emergency Support Function No. 12], which relates to energy. During and following the storm we provide hourly updates on the status of statewide electric outages. Our electric IOUs are ready to immediately address storm impacts.” The Georgia PSC “will have two staff members in the State Operations Center who will receive information on outages from the utilities, and then pass that on the SOC,” a commission spokesman emailed. Utilities also will have personnel in the SOC, he said. The agency will be open Friday since its Atlanta office is 300 miles from the coast and not expected to be affected by the hurricane, but main offices will be closed over the long weekend, he said. The South Carolina PSC, also located inland in Columbus, closed Wednesday “until further notice” under executive order by Gov. Nikki Haley (R), said its website. The FCC said Wednesday its operations center will be open all weekend for the storm (see 1610050062). Broadcasters should prepare, too, an industry lawyer blogged (see 1610060013).
AT&T and union workers asked a federal court to bar Louisville from enforcing a one-touch, make-ready ordinance. Wednesday, AT&T amended its complaint against the city in U.S. District Court in Louisville; Thursday, the Communications Workers of America supported the company in an amicus curiae notice. The law, meant to speed the pole attachments process for new entrants like Google Fiber, attracted a separate lawsuit -- on similar grounds -- by a Charter subsidiary earlier this week, and AT&T sued over a similar rule in Nashville (see 1610040069 and 1609230039). The suits illustrate the risk for cities considering one-touch, make-ready laws, but better broadband may be worth the fight, said attorneys and advocates for local broadband.
At least eight states and territories will have new governors in 2017 who will need to quickly get up to speed on the national public safety network to inform state decisions next year on whether to opt in or out to FirstNet state plans. “It’s going to be a whole new crop of governors and their staff who need to be educated on what FirstNet is [and] what their obligations are under the law,” said National Governors Association (NGA) Homeland Security and Public Safety Division Director Jeffrey McLeod. FirstNet and single points of contact (SPOCs) in three affected states told us they’re prepared for the transitions.